1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital camera provided with a tilting/swinging mechanism.
2. Description of the Related Art
In conventional tilting/swinging photography with a camera using sensitive film, the photographic lens is moved (tilted or swung) relative to the camera body in which the sensitive film is fixedly positioned. More specifically, conventional tilting/swinging photography with a camera using sensitive film is known for being able to sharply focus entirely on a surface of an object which is inclined to a plane orthogonal to the optical axis of the photographic lens by tilting or swinging the optical axis of the photographic lens relative to the direction normal to the film plane. In theory, the camera can be sharply focused entirely on a surface of an object which is inclined to a plane orthogonal to the optical axis of the photographic lens by making the extended surface of the film surface, the extended surface of the object surface, and the extended surface of a lens surface intersect one another along a straight line, according to the Scheimpflug principle.
In such conventional tilting/swinging photography, it is necessary to use a complicated mechanism for tilting or swinging the lens mount plate to which the photographic lens is fixed relative to the camera body, which inevitably increases the size of the camera body. In the case of performing the tilting/swinging photography with a digital camera, if the tilting/swinging mechanism designed for a camera using sensitive film is applied to the digital camera, the image plane tends to move largely relative to the sensitive surface of the image pick-up device (e.g., a CCD) of the digital camera, because the image pick-up device is generally smaller than a film surface (the sensitive surface of a film frame).